When I asked you to support us, I was not clear in explaining
the vote ratings -- from the highest to the lowest (7---->1) --
and this lowered the final score... mea culpa, mea culpa, mea
maxima culpa!
I was asked by several readers of the Journal of South Asia Women Studies, of which I
am the Editor-in-Chief, to clearly explain the vote ratings and
procedures: even though we entered the same competition later,
we have won the 1st price for the Highest Data Quality Resource,
the 2nd Best Overall Resource, the 2nd Most Elegant Resource.
Nevertheless...I am so proud of your feedback and our results!
Thank you again.

I would like to add a few words to a recent discussion on a very
debated American decision: the Communications Decency Act of
1996. In fact, the Members of Congress have passed the
Telecommunications Deregulation Bill. According to the
ACLU
(American Civil Liberties Union),

"The new law will establish a
big governement censorship regime with new speech crimes for the
Internet and online communications... The Indecency standard got
its start in 1978, with a Supreme Court decision called Federal
Communication v. Pacifica. Pacifica radio in New York City had
broadcast a satiric "Filthy Words" monologue...".

I suggest you to read the ACLU
page and to click on Cyber-Liberties. Sooner or later, every country of the world will
face the same problems.
In the ACLU page there is also a quiz to test our knowledge of
the Seven Filthy Words, and the Plaintiffs' Memorandum of Law in
Support of a Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order and
Preliminary Injuction.

Plaintiffs: AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION, et al.

Defendant: JANET RENO, in her official capacity as ATTORNEY
GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES

Concerned about the facially unconstitutional provisions of the
Act, students from more than twenty-five of the American law
leading schools have organized to protest the legislation. This
is the first nationally organized protest involving U.S. law
schools since the Vietnam War.

Can this law be of some specific interest to our Journal? Yes,
it can: we have planned to publish a paper on Khajuraho with
pictures that, as everybody knows, are rather sexually explicit.
However, the pictures we will publish will be only those
scholarly relevant and appropriate. Therefore, even though the
cyberspace is controlled, I am not concerned about the
consequences.

In one of the next issues we will also publish the Sanskrit text
with a translation and introduction of a devotional poem of an
anonymous Shivaite author.

Tantra FAQ: what is it?

We have a project to be realized all together. We will publish a
list of Frequently Asked Questions on Tantra (Tantra FAQ) and
anybody can answer and/or add more questions. The idea comes
from a very learned Sanskrit amateur who prefers to remain
anonymous. He is also one of the most active members of the
Sanskrit mailing list and newsgroup. For more information,
browse

Before Christmas 1995, he asked me whether I was interested in
answering some questions on Tantra which occurred to him and one
of his friends. He rightly noticed that there are still a lot of
misunderstandings on the ethics, and the scholarly value of the
study of Tantric practice -- and, I should add, a lot of insane
interest on them. I think this is due to some aspect of the
Tantric ritual. In a word, if I can re-interpret him, Tantrism
is associated mainly with obscene and/or cruent rituals, and
with miracolous mantra able to make us win.

This is why I see the necessity of a FAQ: just to clear up the
air, and to give anybody the possibility both to learn and to
give his/her contribution to the topic.

We need you in order to realize the FAQ.

How can you contribute to the Tantra FAQ?

You all are strongly invited to add more questions or to answer
one or more of the following questions. When you answer, please
give a bibliography of reference books, whenever it is possible.
When answering, please refer to the number and report the full
text of the question(s). You can mail the answer to me
(garzilli@asiatica.org).

What about the final outcome?

Your questions and the answers or the parts of them that will be
included in the Tantra FAQ will be fully quoted, with name and
email address of the contributor(s). If a question has multiple
contributors, I will edit and quote all of them. Then the whole
file will be published in a separate issue of the IJTS which,
like all the other issues, will be Copyrighted. I will be the
maintainer of the FAQ; that means you can send me new questions
and new answers (e.g. titles of new books and resources) and I
will update the FAQ. All the names of the new contributors will
be fully quoted.

At the end of the year the IJTS will be published
and distributed in hard copy (ooops! I anticipated the news....)
and in the issue where the FAQ is published
everything will appear as in the electronic format.

After the first electronic publication in the IJTS and the
Copyright registration, the FAQ will be available on our ftp and
http servers. The TANTRA FAQ will be periodically posted to the
relevant newsgroups and mailing lists.

In short, every contribution/contributor(s) will be fully
quoted, the FAQ Copyright belongs to the IJTS, and I will be the
maintainer, updating and posting the FAQ list.

We will re-publish the FAQ questions in a separate mail.
The FAQ will be a real work in progress and a collaboration
between me and you -- and, hopefully, the person who mailed the
questions to me.
I thank you in advance for your contributions!

There are many other projects regarding Sanskrit organized by a
group of volunteers: if you want to give your contribution or
you simply want to know what is going on, please browse

In our Computer Space we will publish the paper-review Typing
Devanagari on a Standard Keyboard, by Derick Miller. He worked
as a Senior Quality Assurance Engineer, testing commercial
software. He left the computer industry to pursue graduate work.
He was awarded a MA in Eastern Classics (Sanskrit) by St. John's
in Santa Fe in 1995. We should add that, according to what
Miller has written to us, he has no financial stake in the
products reviewed.

As already announced, we will distribute in a separate file the
Directory Email Book of the Members who have answered the form
that everybody receives when he/she subscribes. The DEB form
will be re-mailed and the list will be updated and re-
distributed from time to time. We are not responsible for any
wrong or incomplete information we publish in the DEB. The DEB
will not be published on our WWW page.

You can copy the form from this page or download it from our ftp server in the IJTS directory. If you want to reply you
have just to fill up the blanks and send the form back to me
(garzilli@asiatica.org)
or to the IJTS (ijts@asiatica.org). We will
publish the info only in the way you write them. We will not be
responsible for any wrong or incomplete info.

The more answers we get the more useful the DEB will be. We hope in your
collaboration!
All the material published in the IJTS is Copyrighted. Please
note the new Copyright note at the end of every issue.

FAQ Questions

What is Tantra?

What is its word origin and historical background?

What are Tantric practices?

How do they differ from ideal sense in present practices?

What is the ultimate purpose for these practices?

How is it related to Kundalini yoga or Shakti movement?

What are its main concepts?

Why and how is Tantra practice related to sex?

Is Tantra used to gain happiness through sexual activities without loss of energy?

How does the meditation and concentration part interlinked to Tantra?

What are some of its misconceptions?

Why is Tantra not acceptable in family surroundings?

Why Tantra is considered as a taboo almost everywhere?

What can be done to remove misconceptions and emphasize positive aspects?

How is Holi festival linked to Tantra?

How are the older (ancient) practices different from the present ones?

Why does the Tantra practice give the notion of `strip and meditate?'

How are Tantra, Yantra, and Mantra related to each other?

Which actions do we do daily which can be classified as some form of Tantra practices?

What are five `ma-kaar-s' mentioned as the pillars of Tantric practises?